Look Ahead in Anger
by ilexx
Summary: Beka's thoughts during Shadows Cast...


I don't own anything Andromeda.

Set after SCBAFS.

**Look Ahead in Anger**

Stop! Quit throwing me those furtive glances when you think yourself unobserved. What do you expect to happen? What do you fear? That I'll break down? That I'll start sobbing? Why should I? It wasn't me who asked him to join my crew, it wasn't me who kept fighting with him for his mind and soul, it wasn't me who kept repeating to myself that what we lived through together matters to him, who refused – time and again **refused **– to face reality that he is a Nietzschean and that he'll stay a Nietzschean to the end.

_"I'm a gullible man when it comes to certain Nietzscheans."_ Ha! Ain't that the truth! Only: you're selling yourself short. You're not a gullible man when it comes to certain Nietzscheans, Dylan. It goes for all of them. It's been quite a while, ever since I saw your face when Admiral Rhade and his family came onboard to pick up the remains of Gaharis, that I began to suspect that you will never get over what happened with him, never make your peace with it. I don't know if it's guilt that you didn't notice, that you couldn't convince him to reconsider, that you had to kill him... But whatever it is: you'll never be finished with it. And subsequently you'll never be finished with the Nietzscheans. They're traitors, they're killers, assassins, following a code of honour that might just be great in a pack of wolves. In humans though...Oh, I grant you that they're pretty to look at, that it's exciting to try and master them like you would try to tame a beast, but ultimately they are and remain animals, predatory, feral, merciless creatures whom you shouldn't ever trust too much. You though will never cease to try to trust them to the very end.

Ahh, what does it matter? Why should I even bother?

Don't look at me with those puppy eyes bleeding hurt and grief. What do you want me to do about it? I know you're hurting, we all are. Trance is crawling around as if the universe is coming to an end and she's to blame for it, Rommie is shutting herself off from all of us, running around in that android-mode that never suited anyone less than her, and Harper... Oh God, Harper! I never thought I'd see something hurt Harper more than his failure to help Earth did, when he almost lost faith in you, in me, in everything; and now I have to stand by helplessly watching him losing faith again, turning back into that scarred, angry, spiteful kid I once picked up to keep. And over an arrogant, backbone-lacking, stupid Nietzschean son-of-a-bitch, at that!

We all hurt, Dylan! And you know what? It's your fault. It was your decision to have him, to stick to him through thick and thin, on Midden, after Acheron, in spite of how he sent all of the Orca-pride to their deaths, to trust him no matter what, to make us all follow you in this trust. Your fault, all of it.

What did you expect? What have you hoped for? A miracle? With a Nietzschean? Yeah, that's what you did, right? I can't get my head around that after Gaharis you actually believed and hoped and honestly thought that the miracle will happen. With Tyr Anasazi, of all people! You should have asked me, you should have listened to me when I offered you my advice unasked: we all hope for this kind of miracle to happen, Dylan, but when we then go ahead and truly give ourselves away to someone, it's always the same pathetic old song, I could have told you that: it doesn't matter who you love and who finally gets to break your heart. We're all ultimately driven by the fate we believe in – and if we really mean it, then it always ends with rejection and betrayal.

So quit suffering! You'll find yourself another Nietzschean. I'll find myself another one, too. Not that the asumption I read in your eyes were true: I never had the one you dumped on me in the first place, not really anyway. But if I told you that, you wouldn't believe it. You think I let him have me. You always did, without ever being able to explain why you think it. Probably because **you** never had me – so someone else must, right? Wrong. He never had me, never. But you know what? Nietzschean code or not, **I** could have had **him**, had I put my mind to it. And yet I didn't. Do you want to know why? Because - had I taken him - it would have been a lie from the start, because I would from the very beginning have thought of someone else. Another one, who - though different - is just as strange, as foreign, as far apart from me as Tyr was, but with whom at least not _everything _would be a lie. At least I don't think so.

Stop mourning. It's not worth it. You won't see me mourning. Not because of something as banal as having been betrayed by someone I opened my heart to. It's not worth it to cry for some lost love or other. There always is more than just one fish in the pond – and many of them are just as superb sharks as this one was. Take your pick, the universe is full of seducing predators only waiting for their chance to rip you apart. Choose the ones you like best, and make them promise you love and trust and loyalty, and that they will forever belong to you and stick by your side. What does it matter if it's all a lie? Just tell them that you too belong to them. And learn to smilingly pay them back in the same coin: more elegant lies.


End file.
